Právní aspekty reorganizace československého divadelnictví po druhé světové válce

After World War II (in May 1945), Czechoslovakian theaters were reopened. The so-called theater revolution began, during which the theater industry in Czechoslovakia experienced fundamental changes in organizational structure. Despite the efforts of Austria-Hungary and the First Czechoslovak Republic, this space was still regulated by the Theater Act of November 25, 1850 (Ministry of the Interior law No. 454/1850). There were also plans to consolidate the regulation of the theater industry in Czechoslovakia, as Hungarian legal article XXXI had been in effect since 1848 in Slovakia. This was a different (and even older) legal regulation than the one in Bohemia. This work explores the legal considerations of the aforementioned reorganization of theaters. The main goal of the research is to describe how the pre-World War regulatory environment affected the evolution of theater industry regulation thereafter, including mapping out any significant path dependencies. This work subsequently addresses the regulatory changes that occurred in the theater industry after the adoption of the Theater Act in 1948. This author found that the adoption of the Theater Act in 1948 capped a long-term effort by theaters to modify the legal regulation of the theater industry. However, this impeded entrepreneurship and gave monopoly to government-designated theater operators, who were allowed to use the property of the previously private theaters. On the other hand, there were some positive changes, particularly in the field of theater education and puppet theater, which came to be seen as on equal footing with other types of theater arts. However, even the Theater Act of 1948 was not sufficient, and new theater regulation, Act No. 55/1957, on theater activities (Theatre Act), emerged shortly thereafter and came into effect on November 16, 1957.